23 STORIES · TAGGED
KENDRICK LAMAR · 2015
COMPTON, USA
A gospel-grade promise wrapped in West Coast jazz: a young rapper from Compton tells a generation in the middle of an uprising that, somehow…
ENRIQUE IGLESIAS · 2014
MADRID, SPAIN
A summer anthem that bridged Madrid, Miami, and Havana, "Bailando" became one of the most-streamed Spanish-language songs of the decade. Its…
TAYLOR SWIFT · 2014
A masterclass in self-aware celebrity, "Blank Space" weaponized tabloid mythology by becoming the very monster the press had been drawing fo…
PINK · 2011
A power ballad written for the animated film Happy Feet Two, "Bridge of Light" arrived in late 2011 as a quieter cousin to Pink's blockbuste…
SIA · 2014
"Chandelier" sounds like the ultimate party anthem, but it's actually a harrowing confession about alcoholism and addiction — Sia's own. The…
LUIS FONSI FT. DADDY YANKEE · 2017
SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO
En enero de 2017, una canción grabada en un estudio modesto de San Juan rompió todos los récords de la industria musical global. "Despacito"…
DRAKE · 2018
TORONTO, CANADA
A Toronto rapper turns a million-dollar music video budget into a gift to strangers in Miami, and somehow the song attached to it becomes th…
BRUNO MARS · 2010
A devastatingly catchy ballad about asymmetric love, "Grenade" arrived in late 2010 as Bruno Mars's calling card — a song that hides operati…
ADELE · 2015
A piano ballad disguised as a phone call, "Hello" arrived in October 2015 and shattered streaming records before its parent album, 25, even …
DRAKE · 2015
TORONTO, CANADA
A Toronto rapper turns a regretful late-night phone call into one of the decade's most parodied dance moves, and somehow also into a treatis…
KENDRICK LAMAR · 2017
COMPTON, USA
A two-and-a-half-minute earthquake from Compton: a piano stab, a sneer at industry vanity, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning album's opening salv…
BRUNO MARS · 2010
A debut single engineered with the precision of a Brill Building factory and the warmth of a Stevie Wonder ballad, "Just the Way You Are" an…
LIL NAS X · 2019
ATLANTA, USA
A 19-year-old kid from Atlanta bought a $30 beat online, recorded a song about horses in a closet, and rewrote the rulebook of American popu…
NATHANIEL RATELIFF & THE NIGHT SWEATS · 2015
COTTAGE GROVE, OREGON, USA
The biggest drinking singalong of the 2010s is not a drinking song at all — "S.O.B." is a first-person account of alcohol withdrawal, writte…
ADELE · 2011
A symphonic torch song that turned the private theater of heartbreak into a stadium-sized catharsis, "Set Fire to the Rain" arrived in 2011 …
TAYLOR SWIFT · 2014
A horn-driven pop confection that doubled as Taylor Swift's public divorce papers from Nashville, "Shake It Off" is less a song about haters…
LADY GAGA & BRADLEY COOPER · 2018
A film song that became a generational anthem, "Shallow" turned a fictional duet between a fading country-rock star and an unknown bar singe…
ED SHEERAN · 2017
"Shape of You" is the song that broke streaming. Released in January 2017 as a surprise double A-side with "Castle on the Hill," it became t…
ADELE · 2012
A torch song dressed as a spy theme, "Skyfall" reframed the James Bond opening sequence as a meditation on collapse, loyalty, and the strang…
ADELE · 2011
A piano, a voice, and a wound that refuses to scab over. "Someone Like You" arrived in 2011 as the closing track of Adele's 21, and within m…
ED SHEERAN · 2011
LONDON, UK
It sounds like a gentle, fingerpicked love song, but "The A Team" is actually about a young homeless woman trapped in crack cocaine addictio…
ED SHEERAN · 2014
A waltz-time love song dressed in soul-revivalist clothing, "Thinking Out Loud" became the third single from Ed Sheeran's 2014 album x and g…
MARK RONSON FT. BRUNO MARS · 2014
A swaggering, synth-slathered love letter to Minneapolis funk that became the unlikeliest global juggernaut of the streaming era. Beneath it…